Mr. Charles M. Sheldon, the well-known war artist, who has done splendid work for The Wide World, has had several exciting experiences in the course of his career. He was the special artist for Black and White during the Dongola Campaign in 1896, and received the Khedivial medal with two clasps awarded to the correspondents. He went through the Spanish-American War in Cuba, was dispatched to South Africa at the time of the Jameson Raid, and has also represented his paper in India. Mr. Sheldon has a studio full of interesting souvenirs of his various campaigns.
MR. CHARLES M. SHELDON, WHOSE JOURNEY DOWN THE HANNOCK CATARACT ON THE SIDE OF A CAPSIZED BOAT IS HERE DESCRIBED.
From a Photograph.
It was during the Dongola Campaign that Mr. Sheldon met with his most exciting adventure, and the fact that he is alive to-day is more owing to good fortune, he says, than to any skill on his part on that occasion.
Mr. Sheldon joined the column advancing on Dongola under the command of the Sirdar, then Sir Herbert Kitchener, at Wadi Halfa, and was present at the Battle of Firket. After the battle, and while the railway was being brought up, the army camped for a couple of months at Kosheh, where, in addition to the terrible heat and sandstorms, cholera broke out, and threatened at one time to annihilate the camp. When the railway was completed as far as Kosheh, the force marched across an arm of the desert to Hafir, where the gunboats drove the dervishes from their forts with such loss that Dongola fell after very little resistance. The country being cleared of the enemy, and the war for that year at an end, the correspondents made hasty preparations for their journey to Cairo on their way back to England. In order to reach rail-head, they decided to travel by boat down the Nile to Firket, Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Seppings Wright, the artist of the Illustrated London News, arranging to make the journey together. Having sold their horses and camels and discharged their native grooms, with the exception of one camel-man, they packed their baggage and war-trophies on board a boat—purchased from Mr. H. A. Gwynne, now editor of the Standard—and started down the river. They expected to accomplish the journey in about six days and nights, and for the first three days the conditions were delightful, as, floating mainly with the swift current, they made rapid progress, enjoying to the full their enforced ease after the hard work of the campaign. As they approached the Hannock, or third cataract of the Nile, however, the voyage became more exciting, and extreme caution was necessary on the part of the pilot in charge of the boat. The Hannock cataract is, indeed, a formidable menace to navigation, consisting as it does of about sixty miles of shelving ledges of rock and groups of huge boulders, over and among which the water rushes headlong in a series of whirlpools and rapids. It was here that several of the boats taking part in Sir Garnet Wolseley’s campaign were overturned and many lives lost.
THE ROUGH SKETCH OF THE RAPIDS WHICH MR. SHELDON WAS MAKING WHEN THE DISASTER OCCURRED—IT WAS AFTERWARDS RECOVERED FROM THE WRECK OF THE BOAT.
The first few miles of the cataract were negotiated in safety in the early morning, and Mr. Sheldon had just finished making a sketch of the rapids when sudden and dire disaster overtook the party. The boat was a stoutly built, three-quarter-decked craft, with one huge wing-like sail, and the pilot had given the sheet into the care of the camel-man, who, to save himself trouble, tied it, unobserved, to one of the seats. Finding it necessary to tack across the river, to take the boat through a safe channel between the rocks, the pilot, to bring the sail over, shouted to the man to let go the rope. As it was securely fastened to the seat, however, he was unable to do so, and in an instant, as the strong wind caught the tacking boat, it capsized, flinging its occupants with startling suddenness into the water.